The Gravy was one of London’s most exclusive restaurants, reserved for celebrities and millionaires. It was so exclusive, even the waiters had trouble getting in, and the name was written in tiny letters as if it didn’t want anyone to notice. It was tucked away in a quiet street near Covent Garden with a doorman sizing up everyone who came close. He looked at Tim and me with an expression of complete disgust. But this was the sort of place where even the doormat didn’t say WELCOME. It preferred to say GO AWAY.
Why had I come? Part of the answer was that I was worried about Tim. I still didn’t know what Minerva was up to, but I didn’t trust her and I wanted to be there if things took a turn for the worse. But also, I quite fancied dinner at The Gravy. The food was said to be so good that the chef actually cried when you ate it. The house speciality was a leg of lamb cooked in Armagnac – and no matter that it cost you an Armagnac and a leg. Even a glass of water at The Gravy was expensive. It probably came out of a gold-plated tap.
The head waiter showed us to the best table, and there was Minerva looking stunning in a white silk dress that hugged her tight in all the right places and tighter still in some of the wrong ones. Her face fell when she saw me but she didn’t protest as a couple of waiters hastily added a third setting to the table. It was only as we sat down that she muttered, “I’m surprised you brought your little brother, Timothy. Couldn’t you find a babysitter?”
“I’m no baby, Minerva,” I said.
“I was hoping to be alone with your big brother. I want to get to know him a little better.”
“Just pretend I’m not here.”
And that’s exactly what she tried to do for the rest of the meal. The waiter came over with three menus but she chose only for the two of them, leaving me to decide for myself. That suited me. I went for the straightforward steak and chips, leaving the fancy stuff with the French names to her and Tim. If I’ve got one rule in life, it’s never eat anything you can’t translate.
“So tell me, Timothy,” Minerva said, winking at him. “How would you like a little bubbly?”
Tim looked awkward. “Actually, I had a bath before I came.”
“Bollinger!” she exclaimed.
“No. Really. I did!”
Minerva ordered a bottle of Bollinger. I asked for a Coke. The way she was making eyes at Tim, it really did seem that she had designs on him and I couldn’t understand it. I mean, he was fifteen years younger than her and about fifty thousand times poorer. What could she see in him? I watched him as he opened the champagne for her. There was an explosive pop, followed by a scream from the other side of the room.
“The head waiter?” Tim asked.
“No,” I said. “Just a waiter’s head.”
Minerva didn’t seem to mind. She snuggled up close to him. “I love a man who makes me laugh,” she said. “Can I ask you something, Timothy? Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Not at the moment,” Tim answered.
“There’s nobody waiting for you in bed tonight?”
“It’s just Tim and his Paddington Bear hot-water bottle,” I told her.
Tim glared at me.
“I fill it for him every night.”
The waiter arrived with the first course: soup for me, caviar for Tim and Minerva. Personally, I’ve never understood caviar. I mean, when I order eggs, I don’t expect them to turn up tiny, black and fifty quid a mouthful. But she seemed happy enough. I wondered who would pick up the bill.
I could see that Tim was already well out of his depth. He was looking more and more uncomfortable the closer Minerva got, and she was already close enough. Any closer and she would be on his lap.
“Timothy … I think you and I were meant for each other,” she breathed.
“What about your husband?” Tim squeaked.
She sniffed. “Let’s not talk about Harold. He’s half the man you are.”
“Which half are you talking about?”
I couldn’t help chipping in again. “If you dislike him so much,” I asked, “why did you marry him?”
To my surprise, Minerva looked me in the eye for the first time and I knew at once that she was going to be completely honest. “Why do you think?” she replied coldly. “I married Harold for his money. That was at the start of my career. I’d just left Athens and I had nothing. He promised to help me – and he did. Of course, all that’s changed now. Now I’m worth millions!”
“So why are you still with him?”
“I can’t be bothered to divorce him. Anyway, it’s more fun the way things are.”
“Does he know where you are tonight?”
Minerva laughed. “Of course he knows. You should have seen his face when I told him I was going out with Timothy. I thought he was going to have a heart attack!”
So that was why she had invited Tim to The Gravy. I should have seen it from the start. Minerva loathed her husband – that much had been obvious when we first met them at their suite at the hotel – and she amused herself by humiliating him. And what better way than to be seen out in public with someone like my big brother, Tim?
At that moment I disliked her as much as anyone I had ever known. More than Charon, the four-fingered assassin we met in Amsterdam. More than my homicidal French teacher, Monsieur Palis. The thing about Minerva was that she was beautiful, rich and loved by millions. But she had the heart of a snake.
Somehow we got through to the next course. My steak was fine but I didn’t like the look of the grey, jelly-like dish that Minerva had ordered for herself and Tim. It came in a yellow sauce with rice and beans.
Tim wasn’t sure either. He had eaten about half of it when he stopped and looked up. “What did you say this was?” he asked.
“Cervelles de veaux au beurre.”
He took another mouthful. “It tastes interesting,” he said. “What does that mean?”
“Grilled calves’ brains in butter.”
Two minutes later we were standing outside on the pavement with the doorman glowering at us, glad to see us go.
“That was a nice evening,” I said.
“Do you think Minerva enjoyed it?” Tim asked.
“Well, you may have spoiled it a bit when you were sick on her.” I looked around for a bus or a taxi.
“I want to go home,” Tim groaned. He was still looking very green.
“To Paddington Bear?”
“Just get us a cab!”
But as it turned out, we weren’t going to need a bus or a cab. Because just then a car came screeching to a halt in front of us and two men leapt out.
“It’s a police car!” Tim exclaimed.
That was particularly brilliant of him and I wasn’t sure how he’d worked it out. Maybe it was the blue uniforms the men were wearing. Or it could have been the car with its flashing lights and the word POLICE emblazoned on the side. But he was right. I thought they’d come to look after Minerva – but it was the two of us they made for.
“Are you Tim Diamond?” one of them asked.
“Yes…”
“Get in the car. You’re coming down to the station.”
“What’s going on?” I demanded. “What’s happened? And how did you know we were here?”
They ignored me.
The policeman was examining Tim. “We want to talk to you,” he said.
“What about?” Tim quavered.
The policeman smiled but without a shred of warmth or humour. It was the sort of smile a doctor might give you before he explained you only had a week to live. “You’re wanted, Mr Diamond,” he said. “For murder.”
THE DEAD MAN
I don’t like police stations. They’re full of violent and dangerous characters who need to be kept away from modern society … and I’m not talking about the crooks. A lot of people say the British police are wonderful, but I’d have to disagree. I was only fourteen but I had been arrested so often, it couldn’t be long before they gave me my own set of personalized handcuffs. I even spent a month in prison once – and
I hadn’t done anything wrong! When I look back on it, there’s only one word to describe the way I’ve been treated. Criminal.
This time they drove us to a police station in Holborn, about ten minutes’ drive from The Gravy. Tim had gone very pale and quiet in the back of the car. Cervelles de veaux au beurre and now this! We stopped and the two policemen led us in through a door and down the usual corridor with white tiles on the walls and hard neon lighting above … the sort of corridor that can only take you somewhere you don’t want to be. There was an interrogation room at the end: four chairs, one table and two detectives. The furniture was hard and unattractive but that was nothing compared to the men.
Detective Chief Inspector Snape and Detective Superintendent Boyle. They were old friends and, like most of Tim’s old friends, they hated us. Why was it that whenever we got into trouble, the two of them always seemed to show up? Surely the Metropolitan Police could have found two new officers to molest us? Anyway, put an ape and a Rottweiler in suits and you’ll get a rough idea of Snape and Boyle. Snape was the older of the two and the one less likely to have rabies. He was looking old, I thought. But he’d probably looked old the day he was born.
“Well, this really is the perfect end to a horrible day,” Snape began as we sat down. It didn’t look as if he was going to offer us a cup of tea. “Tim Diamond! The only detective in London with no brains.”
Tim went a little green.
“I wouldn’t mention brains unless you know a good dry cleaner,” I said.
“I want to go to bed!” Tim moaned.
“You’re not going anywhere, Diamond,” Snape cut in. “I’m investigating a murder and right now you’re my only suspect.”
“Can I hit him?” Boyle asked hopefully.
“No, Boyle.”
“Can I hit his little brother?”
“No!”
“But they were resisting arrest, sir!”
“We haven’t arrested them yet, Boyle.” Snape shook his head and sighed. “I’ve just sent Boyle on an anger-management course,” he told us.
“Did it work?” I asked.
“No. He got angry and hit the manager so they sent him back again.”
“Well you’re wasting your time,” I said. “We haven’t murdered anyone.”
Snape looked at me with disdain. “What can you tell me about a man called Reginald Parker?” he said.
“I can’t tell you anything, Snape,” I said. “We’ve never met him.”
“What’s happened to him?” Tim asked.
“He’s been murdered,” Snape replied. “He was strangled this afternoon. He lived at 27 Sparrow Lane and his neighbour heard the sound of a fight. She called us and we found the body.”
“What makes you think it’s got anything to do with us?” I asked.
Snape nodded at Boyle. “Show them!”
Boyle leant down and produced a car battery connected to a tangle of wires with clamps on the end. He placed it on the table and glanced unpleasantly at Tim. Snape raised his eyes. “I don’t mean that! I want you to show them the evidence!”
Boyle scowled. He opened a drawer and this time he produced a transparent evidence bag with something inside it. I recognized it at once. No problem too problematic. It was Tim’s business card.
“We found this next to the body,” Snape said. “How do you explain that?”
“A coincidence?” Tim suggested.
Snape’s face darkened. “Of course it’s not a coincidence, you idiot! It’s a clue! Was Reginald Parker a client of yours? That wouldn’t surprise me. Anyone stupid enough to hire you would almost certainly wind up dead.”
I shook my head. “I told you, Chief Inspector. We’ve never seen him.”
“How can you be so sure of that? I haven’t even told you what he looked like.”
Boyle opened the drawer a second time and produced a black and white photograph.
You can always tell when the police have taken a picture of someone after they’re dead. They don’t smile for the camera. In fact, they don’t do anything. And the black and the white somehow seems to suit them. All the colour has already gone. The photograph showed a short, plump man with curly hair, lying on his back in the mess that had once been the room where he lived. I gasped. Because the truth was that I did know him. I had seen him once and only briefly, but it wasn’t a face I was going to forget.
Reginald Parker was the man who had tried to shoot Minerva. He was the man on the roof above Regent Street.
“Did you find a gun in his room?” I asked.
Snape shook his head. “No. I told you. He was strangled.”
“How about a handful of silver acorns? Or anything to do with oak trees?”
Boyle leant over the table and grabbed me by the collar. I felt myself being dragged to my feet. My feet left the floor. One of my shirt buttons went shooting over my shoulder. “Are you taking the mickey?” he demanded.
“No!” I gurgled. “I’m trying to help you. I did meet this man. I just didn’t know his name.”
Boyle turned to Snape, still holding me in the air. “Shall I wire him up to the car battery, sir?”
“Certainly not, Boyle!” Snape looked offended. “He’s going to tell us everything anyway.”
“I know that, sir. But this way he’ll tell us quicker.”
“Just put him down!”
Boyle looked on the edge of tears but he dropped me back into my seat. And then I told them everything that had happened since Jake Hammill had walked into our office. The meeting at the hotel. The events in Regent Street. Snape nodded when I talked about that. He must have seen Tim on the news.
“You’re sure it was Parker on the roof?” he asked.
“It’s the same face, Chief Inspector,” I said.
“And you think he was a member of this organization – Overweight Albanian Kids?”
“He was certainly overweight.” I nodded at the photograph.
“But as far as we know, he wasn’t Albanian.”
“Maybe he lived in Albania when he was young.”
“We’ll check it out.”
“Does this mean you’re letting us go?” Tim asked, getting to his feet.
“Not so fast, Diamond!”
“All right.” Tim sat down, then got up more slowly.
Snape glowered. “I’ll see you two again!” he said.
“Yeah. And I’ll be waiting.” Boyle was standing there holding one of the electrical contacts in his hand. The other was on the table. I passed it to him.
“Don’t forget this,” I said.
He took it in the other hand.
We could still hear Boyle screaming as we raced back down the corridor and out onto the street. But that’s the modern police for you. Shocking.
When Tim and I had breakfast the next morning, I could see he was deep in thought. He didn’t even react when he upturned the cereal packet and got the plastic toy.
“I just don’t get it,” he said at length.
“What’s that, Tim?”
“Well … this guy … Archibald Porter.”
“I think you mean Reginald Parker.”
“He tried to kill Minerva and now somebody has killed him. But that doesn’t make any sense. Nobody knew who he was. So why kill him? If they wanted to protect Minerva, they could have just reported him to the police.”
He frowned but then his eyes brightened. “Maybe it was just another coincidence!” he exclaimed. “Maybe his death was an accident!”
“It’s quite tricky to get strangled by accident,” I pointed out.
Tim nodded. “I wonder how he got my business card?”
“That’s exactly what we’re going to find out…”
We were lucky that Snape had given us Parker’s address. As soon as Tim had finished breakfast, we looked up Sparrow Lane in Tim’s A–Z. Actually, it was an A–W. He’d got it cheap. Then we took a bus to the other side of London and a narrow street of terraced houses not far from the old meat mar
ket. Number 27 was halfway down and looked exactly the same as numbers 25 and 29 – apart, that is, from the policeman on duty and the blue and white POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS taped over the front door.
To be honest, I’d forgotten that Snape would have left someone on duty and I could see at a glance that we weren’t going to get past the policeman at the door. He had the sort of face that if he ever decided to join the dog unit, he wouldn’t need a dog. Ignoring him, I went straight to the house next door and rang the bell, hoping the owner would be in.
She was. The door opened and a huge, cheerful Caribbean woman in a brilliantly coloured dress appeared on the doorstep, the great slabs that were arms folded across her ample breast. “Yes, me darlings? How can I help you?” she boomed out.
I nudged Tim.
“I’m Tim Diamond,” Tim said.
“Yes?” The woman was none the wiser.
“My brother is a private detective,” I told her. “He wants to ask you some questions about the guy who lived next door.”
“That’s right,” Tim explained. “And if he lived next door, then I’d imagine he must have been your neighbour.”
“That’s brilliant, Tim,” I muttered. “How did you work that one out?”
It turned out that the woman was called Mrs Winterbotham and had lived at number 25 for almost as many years. Her husband was out, working at the meat market, and she invited us into her kitchen and gave us tea and coconut biscuits. She had already told the police everything but she was going to enjoy telling us again.
“Reginald was an actor,” she said, then looked left and right and lowered her voice as if he might be listening from beyond the grave. “But he wasn’t a very good one. Oh no! He was out of work most of the time. He was in The Cherry Orchard last May, playing one of the cherries. And last year he appeared at the Unicorn Theatre in a one-man show.”
“Was it popular?” I asked.
“No. Only one man came.” Mrs Winterbotham dropped three sugar cubes into her tea and helped herself to another biscuit. “Reginald was a nice man. But, you know, I’m not sure it really helped his career, his having a stutter.”
The Greek Who Stole Christmas Page 4